Whatever You Want — Look Within — The answer won’t come from where you’re currently searching

What do you really want? What do you REALLY want? Perhaps that’s not such an easy question to answer, but when most people reflect on this, despite a whole range of different specifics, I find all those answers can be seen to be heading in the same direction.

What do you want?

I want to pass my exams. Why? So I can get a good job. Why? So I can earn a decent income, go on holidays, provide for my family, feel that I’ve achieved something, proved that I’m skillful, feel good about myself. Why? So that I can finally relax and be happy.

or…What do you want?

I want a great relationship. Why? So that we can have wonderful times together, so that I can raise a family, so that I can enjoy life, so that I’m not alone. So that I can finally relax and be happy.

See what I mean about always heading in the same direction?

1 — There’s something in the world I need to get or achieve so that

2 — I can be happy.

‘Be happy’ is really a kind of shorthand, I think, for peace of mind. You’ve probably realised that you’re never going to spend your entire life, 24/7 in a state of smiling, joyful happiness. But what would it be like to be able to to be fully IN your life, engaged and at ease, without feeling there’s somewhere else to get to, without feeling anxious about stuff or fearful of the future, without stress and exhaustion. That sounds like what I call peace of mind.

Whatever we think we’re looking for, we’re looking for it because we think it will bring us peace of mind. If you look around, you’ll notice that people are looking for all kinds of different things, but that’s only because we’ve all made up different stories about how we’re going to achieve that peace of mind, happiness, whatever you want to call it.

But it usually looks as if there’s something that needs to be done first — things that need to be achieved before that peace of mind arrives. Sure, we can feel happy now and then along the way, and have some great times, but it still seems as if there’s somewhere that we need to get to — a goal to be achieved — before we can really feel that things are how we want them to be.

What if that’s not true?

Because what I’ve seen is that the peace that we are looking for is not waiting for us at the end of that assault course of achievements we’ve set up in front of ourselves. It’s not there, because if you think life is set up like that (in fact, YOU set it up like that), you will never get to the end of your achievements list because you’ll KEEP setting it up like that — you’ll always be adding some new goal as quickly as you achieve the next. Like a dog chasing its own tail, the goal is moving away from us as fast as we head towards it.

But the good news is, peace of mind is available right here, right now. There’s a whole new world to see, and when we see it, we can drop into peace and contentment at any time. It really is possible to experience peace of mind even when the circumstances of life seem to be stacked against us.

That new world does not exist outside of us, and achieving certain things in a certain way will never get us there. It exists within us, and we access it by seeing things differently. We are already there, we just don’t recognise it when we’re so caught up in the noisy thinking going on in our heads! When our thinking slows down, the blur of life starts to come into clearer focus.

That noisy thinking — the stuff you think you need to sort out before you can experience peace and freedom — holds none of the answers. Simply turn your attention away from your habitual thoughts, or turn down the volume a bit, and wait to see what else shows up.

You probably don’t have any idea what you’re waiting for, where it’s going to come from, or how it might possibly help…but I can guarantee you that’s where the magic happens.

That fresh, new insight could change your life!